HRUSA Blogs from Liberia: "Bye Bye for Now"

My time in Liberia comes to an end today and I’ll be packing to leave this afternoon. I want to thank everyone who followed this blog - sharing the experience with you was a lot of fun and I look forward to talking with you next Monday. Before I go, I would also like to thank the many people who made this trip a smooth, successful experience. (I use initials where I thought that person might prefer not to be identified.)

• John Hummel, Carter Center Director (and host extraordinaire)
• Musu, David, and all of the talented staff at the Carter Center
• “L” at JFK Hospital
• Professor Rice for the helpful insights
• Peter Chapman (Carter Center) and Fin Young (ABA) for the terrific legal research
• Frederick Jayweh and ALLA for pre-travel information
• Jennifer Hazen for helpful referrals and going out on the town in Monrovia
• "G” for sanity-saving workouts
• Ralph Bunche for the pre-travel advice and referrals

I sincerely appreciate how generous each of these people was with their time and/or resources in making this part of Human Rights USA’s work possible. So as I head to the airport, I’ll say to you and Monrovia what one of our clients always says to me, “Bye, bye for now!”

~Piper

HRUSA Blogs from Liberia, Day 8: Election Day

Today was an election day in Montserrado Country, where Monrovia is located, to select a new Senator to replace the one who passed away a few weeks ago (and whose memory was being celebrated the night I arrived, a few doors down from where I am staying). The day was a holiday, meaning all restaurants were closed (or at least so it seemed) and I owe my host a can of peanuts.

The Senatorial candidates, Geraldine Doe and Clemenceau Urey, are now in a run-off after neither won a majority among the multiple candidates two weeks ago. (I try to imagine the U.S. with ten strong parties and wonder if we’d get some fresh ideas or if it would look much like last year’s Democratic debates where everyone spent most of their 90 seconds to speak repeating, “Yeah, what s/he said…”) Some see today’s election as a referendum of the Sirleaf government and, since the vast majority of the Liberian population lives in Monrovia, a harbinger of the 2011 Presidential election. (Despite a population of over one million in Monrovia alone, Montserrado County has 496,508 registered voters - and 989 polling places.

Most agree that the 2011 election will be critical in determining whether Liberia continues on a path to stability or retreats into conflict again. Some say that President Sirleaf and George Weah have done so much speaking on behalf the candidates that Doe and Urey haven’t gotten much of a word in edgewise and it’s hard to know the candidates’ stance on various issues. Since that’s about the extent of what I’ve gathered during my week here, I’ll direct you to more authoritative sources for more info, below:
Click here for statements from the US Ambassador, urging peace, patience and honesty in the election process, quoted in The Analyst. http://www.analystliberia.com/liberia_under_global_spotlight_nov23_09.html

More calls for peaceful elections by allAfrica.com: http://allafrica.com/stories/200911231842.html

Last week’s coverage in the Daily Observer addressing accusations of buying votes. http://www.liberianobserver.com/node/3000 (Signs around town read: to have good Senators, you must be a good voter - don’t sell your vote!)

allAfrica.com’s coverage of the initial by-elections and some problems that arose: http://allafrica.com/stories/200911110708.html

Waiting to hear tomorrow who won….

(Update - still waiting, but very interesting reaction from people I've asked about the election. Turnout was low because, it seems, people have truly lost all faith in all politicians here. The problems seem to be two-fold - one, there are few debates, so people don't know for what the candidates truly stand and two, regardless of who is elected, they become "self-interested" and don't work on behalf of the people. Even in the time they are granted to go to talk to their constituents, most apparently jaunt off to Europe and the U.S. People are truly disheartened and have little faith in the system. An extremely bright young man today told me that he'd rather go into the private sector than politics as "politics is dangerous here in Africa." He was quite the young JFK, saying people should not ask what their country would do for them, but what they can do for their country.)
~Piper

Check back in regularly for updates from Piper as she's in the field. Also - be sure to mark your calendars for November 30th at 4pm, when Piper will host a conference call to talk about her trip to Liberia and the upcoming trial. Feel free to post any questions you have for Piper in advance!

HRUSA Blogs from Liberia, Day 7: Women in Liberia

From my short time here, it appears to me that Liberian women are strong, elegant, and too often disrespected. As in many places in Africa, women (and many men, too) carry items on top of their heads. And by items, I mean to tell you I’ve seen HUGE baskets of shoes placed just so such that other shoes can be piled on top balanced on top of a woman’s head….while she had a baby tied to her back….while carrying items in both arms….while gliding over unpaved roads….then leaping buildings in a single bound. Ok, ok, I exaggerate - but only about the last part. The dress here varies for everyone - some wear business attire and others more traditional dress - gorgeous lapas (a long piece of cloth tied around the waist and reaching to ones lower leg or ankles) and dresses that are colorful and classy. Many wear casual t-shirts that would make vintage shirt fans drool. Seeing a guy wearing an “Everyone loves an Irish girl” shirt was fun, and there are “Obama Girl” shirts at every turn, but my favorite is the picture attached here - “A Wise Man Once Said: I don’t know, go ask a girl.” As the woman carrying this container on her head approached to sell a newspaper page full of peanuts to my fellow traveler, I knew I needed a picture.

While the shirt brought a smile to my face, many signs here have not. In a country that elected the first female President in all of Africa, you would hope not to need billboards reading “No Sex for Jobs” or “Stop Rape - It Could Be Your Ma.” Someone involved in training the military here told me that female candidates had to be told to stop washing the clothes of the male candidates. (I wonder if they had to be told more than once?) From what I hear, treatment of women in the interior is much worse than that in Monrovia. There, men can beat “their woman” and then pay the police to not bring any case against them.* The schools in the interior need vast improvement and children there are often needed to help with the farming. As such, most young women living outside of Monrovia do not receive as much education and often have children at a much younger age. And in other areas, it’s not uncommon to have more than one wife at the same time.

As you have probably gathered by now, I like to leave you with a more hopeful note, so will share that I have also had the pleasure to meet a few young women in Monrovia who are enrolled in school and love it. Murals are a popular way of spreading messages here (“Stop Malaria - Use a Mosquito Net for Your Family” and “There’s no cure for HIV - use protection”). One series of murals depicts one of various female leaders here with the caption “Another great Liberian woman - You Could be the Next.” Let’s hope that reaches many young women!

*Speaking of bribes, I forgot to mention that another person and I were stopped at a checkpoint coming back to downtown Friday night. (Note to my parents: stop reading here.) It was past sundown and we were not in a large vehicle that commands respect (read: emblazoned with the logo of an NGO (non-governmental organization) or other established entity like the UN), so the police flagged us down to stop. With flashlights shining in from my side of the car, they asked the driver if he had a license. He did. They paused, looked at me, then asked him to show them what was in the trunk. A few moments later, he returned to the driver’s seat and, as we drove off, said the officer told the driver to “find something for [him].” In response, the driver gave him “small small money.” (Around 40 Liberian dollars, I think.) The driver was clearly frustrated, explaining that the newer officers were the ones who abuse their authority, while the older, better-trained police apparently do not. A few minutes later, we were stopped again by another set of officers. Again, they looked in from the passenger side and the driver explained we’d just been stopped not five minutes ago and nothing had changed since then. They paused and asked if he had his license. Not one to be silent for long, I turned and answered with a firm, “Yes.” (Because being gruff with cops at night in a foreign country is always a good idea.) Another pause. Ok, they said, go ahead. I know some say, “When in Rome…” but, as a lawyer, it’s frustrating to see even the smallest example of corruption in the system. After all, the ultimate impact on the system as a whole and the average citizen’s faith therein is not “small small.”

~Piper

Check back in regularly for updates from Piper as she's in the field. Also - be sure to mark your calendars for November 30th at 4pm, when Piper will host a conference call to talk about her trip to Liberia and the upcoming trial against Chuckie Taylor. Be sure to post any questions you have for Piper in advance!

HRUSA Blogs from Liberia, Day 6: The Wicked Gruna Man.

“I am bouncing along unpaved roads in Liberia in a little 4x4 truck between a Cameroonian lawyer to my left, my self-proclaimed African father to my right, and “R” hanging on tightly in the back, as I’m hearing about some of the worst atrocities I can imagine and carefully holding a freshly grilled plantain wrapped in notebook paper,” I thought to myself today. This was not an average weekend day. We drove far outside of Monrovia and I’m not sure where to begin in sharing with you readers the stories I heard. Like many road trips, this one seemed a natural forum for sharing, but please note these stories may not be easy to read.

As I packed my bag this morning, I tossed in a few snacks, expecting that the men on the trip would not think to do so (more tomorrow on the situation for women in Liberia). Well, “R“ proved me wrong (and yes, I’ll admit, made me quietly regret my earlier sexist assumption) when we picked him up and, with a big smile, distributed packs of ginger cookies to all aboard the truck out of town. Through mouthfuls of the crunchy snacks, someone mentioned how hungry he had been since he skipped breakfast… and the conversation turned to how “R” had been so hungry at times during the war that he could hear ringing in his ears. “Bbbzzzmmmm,” he demonstrated. He recalled that his son had just been born at that time, so when he was able to find food, he gave it to his wife for her well-being and so the baby would be able to have breast milk. Around that point in our journey, we reached a bridge over one of the many beautiful rivers in Liberia. Men in the car recalled a time during the war when food was so scarce in Monrovia that women had to swim across the river to the more lush area and swim back with food for their family on their heads. But the lush areas were where the rebels hid and, more often than not, the women were raped before they were able to return. People knew this…but they also knew that men would be killed if they went, so the women went instead. These stories prompted one passenger to ask others if they were still with the women they had been with during the war. “Oh, yes,” they said - that sort of thing is a stronger bond than any band (wedding ring), they replied.

Our driver, it turns out, had worked with the TRC, or Truth & Reconciliation Commission, collecting stories from war survivors. According to our driver, those who participated in the peace talks in Ghana that ended the war in Liberia (read: mostly warlords that committed war crimes) decided that a TRC a superior option to prosecutions to hold those who committed war crimes responsible (shocking, eh?). As we made our way over some paved and many unpaved roads, he pointed out sites of several massacres and, as we crossed a bridge, explained how people’s bodies had been severed from their heads and allowed to drop into the river while the heads were displayed along the entry to the bridge. Cutting out human hearts to display on the bridge was not uncommon either. One of the worst stories I heard today was about a woman whom rebel soldiers hung upside down and stuffed her “lily” with hot pepper “until it was full.” She survived and reported what had been done to her to the TRC. With stories like this, one has to wonder what horrible scars people have both on their bodies and in their hearts after what happened here. But that violent past is simply reality - mid-sentence about other incidents of torture, one passenger broke off to point out the window and tell me, “That’s how we make palm wine here.”

Eventually, our conversation turned to how the war crimes had come to pass. How can people do such heinous, heinous things to each other? The consensus in the truck was that those fighting had no training in any semblance of rules of engagement and, once armed, they solved old grudges with gunfire. Without commanders who took responsibility for the actions of their subordinates or punished those who wronged civilians, fighting spun out of control until you had fighters who would readily shoot a civilian for the nice shirt on their back. Add to the equation the copious amounts of drugs most fighters were taking throughout the war and you have a recipe for the disaster Mama Liberia experienced. When asked about the source of the drugs, no one knew for sure but said, matter-of-factly, that drugs always follow fighting. If only distribution of useful medications were so efficient.

Talk turned to Taylor, Sr., who one passenger called a “gruna man,” or crook. Another agreed, saying Taylor was “a wicked, wicked man,” who tried to control every aspect of his country, usurping democratic channels and using brute force to terrorize his citizens. And yet he still has supporters in this country who, based on the conversation today, liked what Taylor did for their personal finances so much they overlook what happened to the people during the wars. The idea of the man who campaigned with “He killed my ma, he killed my pa, but I will vote for him” as a slogan returning to power boggles the mind. But the consensus seems to be that people are increasingly accepting that he will not return - and neither will the terror that occurred during his administration.

I recognize that those of you who work in human rights are accustomed to all that I’ve written here, while those of you who don‘t might appreciate ending on a more uplifting note - so I’ll mention that I had the opportunity to meet a man today who is over 100 years old! He remembers figures in Liberian history from, well, nearly 100 years ago. And when one person with our group tried to translate points of historical reference into American terms, saying, “He would be like your JFK,” another dismissed him saying, “No, no, that would be 1963, this is more like the Taft era.” Wow. The knowledge of American history far outside of the US never ceases to amaze me. I’m also attaching some pictures to give you a sense of the beautiful sights around this area of the country.

~Piper

Check back in regularly for updates from Piper as she's in the field. Also - be sure to mark your calendars for November 30th at 4pm, when Piper will host a conference call to talk about her trip to Liberia and the upcoming trial against Chuckie Taylor. Be sure to post any questions you have for Piper in advance!

HRUSA Blogs from Liberia, Day 5: Market Madness, Electricity, and School Children

I had to hit pause on a very productive day when, with a whir and a sigh,

the generator at the Carter Center took its afternoon break. One would think

I might know the generator schedule after several days of being here, but it

seems I’ve been out and about with clients and not in need of electricity

during those times. So making copies of finalized applications for Monday

morning will have to wait for a 30-minute window early tomorrow morning

before we head out of Monrovia.

In the meantime, I’ll update you, our dear readers, with some news from

Monrovia. Speaking of - I’m attaching a picture of “The Daily Talk” - a

large blackboard that is covered with handwritten headlines of the

every-other-day-or-so. Unfortunately, today it was not yet open when we went

by, but the picture gives you a sense of the news stand in place near JFK

Hospital. We drove past on our way outside of town to meet several clients

in the market and ohmigoodness, I don’t know that I can adequately describe

the energy there. Vendors were packed in areas side-by-side or about on foot

toting their wares - from fresh water, to sunglasses, to potato greens, to

towels, to lapas, to anything under the sun - and buyers mixed in along with

cars crawling along as tightly packed as the people but moving more slowly.

(See picture of large truck trying to navigate the market.) Driving here is

a riot. (See picture of some of the roads outside of Monrovia.) Horns are

used to say “watch out, I’m passing on your left,” and “watch out, I’m

backing up,” and “Nope, I’m going first you need to wait” and often just

“Hello, person I know.” Emergency flashers are used to avoid an emergency -

put those on when the person in front of you is waiting to turn left across

solid traffic to let the person behind you know to take your brake lights

seriously. There are tons of taxis - both because no reliable bus system is

in place for those needing to travel significant distances into downtown and

because many people injured by the war cannot do more strenuous work. The

taxis often have messages painted on the back ranging from the religious

(“God is good”) to the practical (“Keep me Clean”), but my all time favorite

was clever or mistakenly ironic but either way hilarious: “NO MSTAKE.”

(sic.)

I’m happy to report that the “snap!” at the end of my Liberian handshake has

shown great improvement and my fist bump, well, that’s so basic it doesn‘t

need practice. Which is a good thing as it seems no small child here can

leave a fist bump unrequited. Put a hand up with the flats of your fingers

and knuckles out steady and even the shiest child is sure to reach a tiny

fist up in response. The bump and my digital camera have won me some small

friends here. While kids are initially skeptical of a foreigner hopping out

of a large 4x4, bring out a camera and show them how to zooooom and voila!

they are enchanted - and enchanting. (See picture some school children took

of others after a quick “press this button” lesson.) My understanding is

that most children do go to school - and you see plenty of uniforms

(Adventist school shirts are bright pink) to attest to that. But school is

very expensive for some parents so some may not be able to attend

consistently. Those in school learn more than English lessons in the

classroom - NGOs like “Right to Play” teach kids valuable cooperation skills

through outdoor playtime. Driving through the outskirts of Monrovia today,

it was fun to see large groups of school kids enjoying playtime. Seeing

them, I wondered how many were old enough to remember when no one would go

out of doors for fear of being hit by a stray bullet and what Liberia will

become as this new generation grows up.

~Piper

Check back in regularly for updates from Piper as she's in the field. Also - be sure to mark your calendars for November 30th at 4pm, when Piper will host a conference call to talk about her trip to Liberia and the upcoming trial against Chuckie Taylor. Be sure to post any questions you have for Piper in advance!

HRUSA Blogs From Liberia, Day 4: Attorney and Counselor-at-Law

“Attorney and Counselor-at-law.” Many of us give this title about as much thought as “peas and carrots.” “Counselor,” we think, is something antiquated - a term that’s just hanging on to have more to fit on a shingle. Or perhaps, like parents used our middle name when we were young, it’s a term that tells you, as the judge leans over the bench with a furrowed brow and a sharp “Counselor!,” that “yous in trouble!” But if we lawyers think our work does not have psychological and emotional elements and that we do not need to consider the mental state of our clients, we deceive ourselves. Family law is an obvious example of an area in which an attorney should remember that clients are likely experiencing strong emotions and the outcome of the case will be deeply personal. But I’ve also seen businesspersons struggle emotionally when the companies they have built over many years risk collapse and employees crumble internally when years of litigation start to take their toll. As an attorney, I believe it is your job to be aware of the impact your work has on your clients and never is that more important than when working with clients like ours who have survived atrocities one can barely imagine.

To this end, I am grateful for the training we at Human Rights USA received from Karen Hanscom at Advocates for Survivors of Torture and Trauma. Karen explained the psychological and physiological ways that being tortured changes one’s understanding of the world and undermines the basic lessons of one’s place in the world learned as a child. Based on Karen‘s training, I understood the need to give the clients I met today a tour of the building where we were meeting, ensuring everything felt open and accessible, and to allow them to sit closest to the door so they didn’t subconsciously feel trapped in the room. And as we began to talk about various aspects of the case, the differences in how our clients have processed what happened to them became remarkably clear. While one gains strength, another remains bitter; where one accepts the past and moves forward, aiming to ensure it is never repeated, another cannot forget and does not want to forgive - not yet. So we discussed legal options and legal reality, as well as the wishes of one’s family and the fact that, no matter how many cases one files, the what is done can never be undone.

A case like this is not simply a series of pleadings and court appearances - it is a healing process. The opportunity for our clients to face the man who wronged them is invaluable. And even if he never showed his face (as some defendants choose to do), our clients find taking a stand (literally, come December!) and exercising their rights extremely empowering.

On a lighter note, the Liberian expressions of the day are “take time” and “dress.” “Take time” means “mind where you’re going” or “look out,” often said to people who wander into the street without paying attention to the traffic (which puts any rush hour in the U.S. to shame - oh, and “shame” here means shy). “Dress” is what you say to people when you need them to make more room, such as in the back of a crowded taxi: “Dress, dress! I need to get in.”

~Piper

Check back in regularly for updates from Piper as she's in the field. Also - be sure to mark your calendars for November 30th at 4pm, when Piper will host a conference call to talk about her trip to Liberia and the upcoming trial against Chuckie Taylor. Be sure to post any questions you have for Piper in advance!